US Secretary of State Colin Powell's one-day China visit gave the two countries the chance of a fresh start after months of bickering, but the root causes of disagreement remain.
Powell, the most senior Bush administration official to visit China, helped Beijing and Washington put their bitter surveillance plane saga behind them and announced the resumption of bilateral talks on human rights, economics and missile proliferation.
His trip also helped smooth the way for a visit by US President George W. Bush in October.
In meetings with President Jiang Zemin (
"Powell put a human face on the Bush administration," said a Western diplomat in Beijing.
"And he actually said things reminiscent of what Clinton said in China," he added, referring to Powell's praise at a news conference of the "gifted, skilled political leadership" guiding economic reforms since he last visited Beijing in the mid-1980s.
For much of this year, Beijing virtually pined for the Clinton era when there was frequent talk of forging a "strategic partnership" between the US and China.
Bush came to office speaking of strategic competition with China and a series of incidents and US policy moves riled the Chinese.
Sino-US ties plummeted in April after the mid-air collision of a US surveillance plane with a Chinese fighter jet.
That accident sparked a bitter 11-day diplomatic standoff as Washington pushed for release of the US crew after the plane made an emergency landing on China's southern Hainan Island.
Weeks after the collision, Bush irked Beijing by announcing a robust arms sales package for Taiwan and vowing to do "whatever it takes" to defend the country from attack by China.
Washington also gave visas to President Chen Shui-bian (
"Six months into our administration, there have been a few ups and downs," Powell told Chinese state television in a recorded interview aired yesterday. "But for the most part I think we are now moving forward in a positive direction."
In the days before Powell's visit, China moved to improve the atmosphere for talks with a flurry of releases and expulsions of US-linked Chinese scholars whose arrest and conviction on spying charges had strained bilateral relations.
Powell won a commitment from Beijing to resume a dialogue on human rights and to hold expert discussions on China's missile technology transfers to problem states, a perennial irritant in relations. They also agreed to talks next month by a committee set up to prevent further incidents like the reconnaissance plane collision.
These measures all pave the way for Bush's trip to China in October for a meeting of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation economic leaders in Shanghai and a state visit in Beijing.
But even a smooth Bush trip won't remove some core problems.
"The potential for things to come out of left field are great, and there are some real issues here. Taiwan, arms sales and other problems are not going to go away," said the diplomat. "It's hard to imagine that it's all going to be smoothed out just because they have managed to get over a bad patch."
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